


Time

by Mohini



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Divorce, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 01:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3918508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’ll give you a few weeks to decide, but I know what your choice will be, at least if you have any sense at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time

I should know better by now. You’d think, after 28 years of knowing him that I would know better than to trust him when he says everything is just fine. We’re at our usual haunt, an industrial club in the middle of London, the drinks flowing freely and the pretty boys and girls in leather and fishnets dancing in the pit. I really should know better. But I agreed to come out tonight even though I know, I absolutely know that this is a mistake. Now I’m watching him as he stands at the bar, his eyes rimmed in dark kohl and his face as pale as ever. That white blonde hair stands out here even more than it does on a daily basis, with the blacklights causing him to rather nearly glow. 

I lost track of his drinks a while ago. I am hoping he hasn’t yet. He’s usually good about it, and if nothing else, he’s never once made any of the stupid mistakes Ron tends to run into when he’s too smashed to remember that Muggle London is absolutely not a good venue for random drunken magic. I know he’s got his wand on him, in a thin sheath on his forearm, carefully glamoured to be undetectable to the non-magical folks around us. I carry mine that way as well, though I also keep a second one lashed to my ankle and a blade in one boot. Call me paranoid if you will, but multiple attempts on my life before reaching my majority made me a little uncomfortable being unarmed. 

He turns to me, a drink in each hand, one of which he passes to me with a weary smile. “Gonna hurt like hell in the morning, but for now, drink, Potter, drink with me,” he rambles. I shake my head and down the shot he’s passed me, replacing the glass on the edge of the bar and wrapping an arm around his waist after he’s done the same. He leans into me, his body as familiar against mine as it was when we were 18 and fresh out of Auror training. 

“I’m taking you home,” I tell him quietly. Once he starts in on the rambling, half slurred encouragements to drink alongside him, it doesn’t tend to take long before we get to broody, sulky Draco. I had quite enough of that version of him when we were in school, thank you very much, so I try my best to avoid it. He’s pliant and thankfully steady on his feet as I lead him out of the club and into a back alley so that we can Apparate safely. I’m thankfully still sober enough to manage to Side-Along him, since I definitely don’t trust him to get anywhere in one piece on his own. 

I’m immensely thankful that he can handle his drink as we come out of the dizzying freefall and land in the foyer of the Manor. He stands stock still for a moment, clearly working to get his bearings. “Thanks,” he says quietly. “Would have spliched off something vital trying it on my own,” he jokes but his voice lacks humor. 

“Let’s get you up to your rooms,” I tell him. He’s been back in the Manor a few months now, and though he swears that it’s just a rough patch with Astoria and that everything will calm down eventually, I’m beginning to have my doubts. Ginny and I have had plenty of rocky points, but I can’t say that either of us has ever actually moved out. 

He leans against me a bit as we make our way through the hallways of his home. By the time we enter his suite of rooms, I’m holding most of his weight and his breathing has gone a little unsteady. He drops onto a chair, hunching over with his head in his hands. 

“Talk to me,” I say, kneeling before him. 

“The papers are on the table,” he says softly. I rise and go to the table indicated, picking up the thick stack of papers. Divorce papers. Custody papers. She’s been given full rights to Scorpius. 

“Draco,” I say softly, returning to his side and putting one hand on his shoulder. He shudders once under my touch and then the floodgates open. Draco’s never been particularly masculine, always just a little too pretty, a little too delicate, and I have to fight the urge to gather him into my arms as I would Ginny if she were breaking down like this. He cries and cries, his entire body shaking as he does so. Eventually, I give in and wrap both arms around him, squeezing myself onto the chair with him and hanging on tight. We’ve been friends more than two decades, and he knows me in ways that Ron and Hermione and even Ginny never will.

When he’s cried himself out, I help him to his feet. I lead him into his bedroom, holding him steady as he undresses and pulls on one of the ridiculous sleepshirts he favors. He looks so vulnerable in the fabric that is normally very loose but is now positively swallowing him. It’s clear he’s lost weight, and I’m worried about him. He curls up in the bed like one of my boys, small and vulnerable and I brush his hair away from his face before covering him in the quilts. 

“Call me when you wake, alright?” I ask him softly. He nods, and I wait with him until he is out, hoping for his sake that he’s still drunk enough to keep his dreams silent. On my way out of the manor, I summon a house elf and ask them to watch over him tonight and to call me if he wakes upset. 

When I apparate into the foyer of my own home, I see the light still burning in the small sitting room. Ginny comes to me and wraps her arms around me before taking my hand and pulling me along to the kitchen. She pours a large measure of scotch into a lowball glass and pushes it towards me. “I spoke to Astoria this evening,” she says quietly.

“So you know she’s taken Scorpius from him?” I ask, unable to keep the bite out of my tone. 

“I asked her why and she said it’s because she doesn’t want him exposed to Draco’s choices, by which I assume she means she’s somehow suddenly not alright with her son having a gay father, when it certainly didn’t bother her to marry a man who was openly gay to start with.”

“What would you do?” I ask, before even thinking about it.

“About the fact you and Draco have been in love for rather nearly our entire adult lives and have had the decency to not actually follow through with it out of some sense of duty you both had beaten into your skulls as kids?” she asks me. I nearly choke on my Scotch. “I’m not blind, Harry,” she continues. “The way you look together, it’s like you’re two parts of a whole. I’ve always half assumed once the kids are grown you’ll leave, to be honest.”

There is no pain in her eyes, only resignation, as though this is a conclusion she came to long enough ago that she made her peace many years past. “Gin,” I start, and she puts a slim hand up to silence me.

“Harry, I love you. Always have, really. Listen, from what Astoria said, he didn’t take it well. Given that you look a bit like you’ve been hit by a lorry, I imagine a night drinking didn’t exactly help matters. Go stay with him. You’ll be up all night worrying about him if you don’t. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She hugs me again and shuttles me towards the floo, into which she tosses a handful of powder before pushing me forward. I go, thankful that my wife is the person she is. 

I find Draco tangled in his sheets, having clearly spent the time since I left tossing about in the bed. I gently untangle him, petting his hair and whispering comfort when he wakes wide eyed to my touch. “It’s alright, I’m here,” I tell him quietly. He nods, laying his head against me and gradually dozing back off, only to wake screaming an hour later. The night goes on like that, with him sleeping fitfully at best. By morning, he’s had three different anxiety potions and has woken up with a vicious hangover that the remedy potion hasn’t touched. 

I send an owl to Ginny explaining that I won’t be home until late and a moment later she’s stepping out of the Floo, her black leather Healer’s bag on her shoulder. “Hi Draco, love,” she call to the man still hunched over his toilet in the en suite. “Sounds like last night didn’t agree with you.” 

She wastes no time joining him in the bathroom, kneeling beside him. “One to ten, how bad do you feel?” she asks. It’s a question I’ve heard from her countless times, usually in response to some injury or another I’ve managed to sustain in the field. Draco groans out a number and promptly vomits again in the toilet.

“Hold still for me, Draco, alright? Going to sting just a bit,” she warns him, before slipping a Muggle hypodermic into his arm. He barely flinches, and she injects the drug quickly. “Harry, love, come get him for me?” she calls out to me. I obey, retrieving him from the bathroom floor and carrying him back to bed. I ask her what she gave him as he burrows into his pillow and sleeps.

“Antiemetic and anxiety medication. Muggle, the both of them, so he’s not actually got an unholy tolerance to them. Should largely knock him out for the next several hours. Once he comes around again, he should be better.” She rummages in her bag and hands me several small phials. “Hydration serum. A few drops on the tongue every half hour or so while he sleeps. It will stop the headache from returning later. And for the love of all things holy, don’t let him drink himself stupid again anytime soon.”

I absently run a hand though Draco’s hair, smoothing it away from his face as he sleeps in absolutely blessed peace. “You’re a miracle worker, Gin,” I tell her quietly.

“Mmhmm, just remember than when we’re figuring up the papers in a few weeks, would you?” she says, and her voice is calm and even. 

I don’t know what to say to that. Ginny can be vicious when she want to be, a truly terrifying duelist and a force to be reckoned with at the height of the war. These days she’s a gifted Healer, those same wandwork skills serving her well in her chosen field. We had all thought, back when Voldemort was newly gone and the world was still turned half on its head, that she would go into professional Quidditch, but she shocked everyone by applying to St. Mungo’s program instead. The face that’s looking back at me now, though, isn’t the gentle healer of our current years. It’s the fiercely determined fighter who destroyed every single opponent she ever faced in battle. 

“There’s no reason to wait, Harry. I’ll give you a few weeks to decide, but I know what your choice will be, at least if you have any sense at all. When he’s back to himself this evening, you may come retrieve what you need to stay here for a while. I’ll keep it quiet. No one has to know until we’re all ready.” Even though she is still quiet and there is no hint of malice in her voice, she frightens me. I’m an Auror, for the love of everything, but this woman is not to be crossed. 

“Thank you,” I tell her. It’s the only thing I can think of, and though it is woefully inadequate, it is what I offer. 

She reaches over and places one hand on mine, squeezing for the barest of seconds. “I love you, Harry. But I know when to give up.”


End file.
